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Opportunities and challenges in the start-ups way

By Hridkamal Roy | Thursday, 23 May 2019, 11:04 Hrs

The start-up revolution has spread its wings all over the world. New businesses in existing domains as well as businesses in niche domains are coming into existence with every passing day. The visibility of the start-up ecosystem has grown so much that industry veterans are quitting their high designations and starting their own companies. However, youth participation to this ecosystem has also been substantial. Names like Mark Zukerberg and Satya Nadella among many others have carved their names in gold on the business atmosphere of the world. When it comes to start-ups, there are most definitely opportunities to shine whereas, challenges also await them on their way up.

Opportunities: The myriad of opportunities that await the start-ups from ideation to execution are more than just numbers. The aspect that first comes to mind while launching a new company is the capital in hand. A business can be ideated but can never be executed without some investments. This is where the start-up ecosystem has ceased all the opportunities possible. Venture capital start-ups that provide the needed funding for any new idea to be executed have come into play. These companies take a start-up idea from scratch and start providing seed funding based on the requirements until it is time for the idea to get out in the market. The world has also seen the influx of angel investors with huge capital investments in hand that can fund and sustain a start-up for years until it finally starts yielding profits.

Incubation centres come next in the line of opportunities for start-ups. Business thinking has reached that level of creativity which can only be prised in golden words. For any new idea to work, a workspace is required. Incubation centres all over the world provide office spaces to start-ups who lack space to function. To get incubated in such an enterprise, one needs to have an idea that can generate profits. It is very easy for a start-up now-a-days to get hold of a workspace in order to start functioning.

Challenges: Just like every coin has a flip side, start-ups that exist in the business ecosystem today face a lot of challenges as well. The first challenge for every start-up is to exist in the market and sustain that existence. On an average, it has been observed that most of the start-up tends to disappear with eighteen months of inception. This might be because they lack the needed assistance in verticals other than the core vertical of the business. Suppose an FMCG start-up comes into action and with the start of production it finds difficulties in the supply chain and logistics. Only because it is a start-up without huge capital in hand, it will not be able to carry on operations unless it gets hold of some seed investments in order to bring further development in the supply chain management. Sometimes there are start-up ideas that might seem to be productive while ideating but when it finally hits the market, turns out to be a flop. This phenomenon has mostly been seen in case of fin-tech start-ups. Because the entry level cost is low in this sector, we see a lot of fin-tech start-ups coming into the market everyday with an equal rate of disappearance.

Ability requirements for start-ups

Creativity: Creativity plays a very important role in the upbringing of a company. The core management of a start-up must always come up with creative ideas so as to sustain a form of newness in the workspace. Implementing newer ideas to work can increase the productivity of the employees and bring about more efficiency at work. At the same time, creativity must also be appreciated when they come from employees themselves. Implementation of the creativity that has come out from the minds of an employee increases the level of respect for the employee to have come up with something good for the company. At the same time, it also adds to the individual growth of the employee who now has a very important aspect of his career in black and white in his resume.

Organizational performance: A start-up needs to live up to the optimum level of organisational performance in order to survive in the ecosystem. In this aspect, there is the situation of all of them competing with the more productive and systematic organisational performances with a lot of man power in hand. On the other hand, the start-ups have a very small team. Each and every member of the team starting from the founder of the company all the way to the newly joined trainee must live up to the exact level of dedication in order to bring about the needed extent of organisational performance in order to compete with the bigger organisations.

Innovation: Innovation can bring about revolutionary changes in the functioning of a start-up. Any innovative approach brings about a change in the existing systems and as a result, the whole system gets a makeover. The influx of innovative start-ups has grown with the rise in the number of venture capital organisations. New and innovative ideas are getting accepted by venture capital firms which are getting funded right from the start. It always must be accepted that with the digital revolution, there has been a massive shift in the customer expectations. Start-ups must always find innovative ways to address the changing customer expectations and bring in more innovative approaches in the Customer Relationship Management software. Innovative ideas in the sector of financial technology are having their golden time in the history of start-ups. Every possible service in order to make the nation cashless is provided by one or the other application available in the play-store. The world has already witnessed the influx of newer fin-tech start-ups that offer a gamut of financial services starting from simple mobile phone recharges to as big as large banking transactions. They have taken control of the market by holding the hands of innovation.